Attaining information technology education and training plays an important role in developing human potential and job creation. Mostly, this is attained traditionally by pursuing a college degree in computing-related fields such as Computer Science, Information Technology, etc. Recently, initiatives and programs such as Bootcamps, code schools, tech meetups, etc, are helping to provide technology training to many youths. In Ghana, these programs have established their place in Accra, Kumasi, Ho, and many more communities and have led to the emergence of a new startup ecosystem in these places. Unfortunately, not all places have these programs and Sefwi is one of the underserved places when it comes to such programs. To make the people the youth in Sefwi join the tech force of lifelong learners through taking courses, learning new skills, and earning credentials to change their careers, lives, and our immediate communities in countless ways, Brightfield Tech Academy was born.

Brightfield Tech Academy is a social venture that seeks to offer tech training heavily on coding and a tech hub for residents of Sefwi, grooming them to become tech-ready for jobs in the software industry or entrepreneurship via the startup route. Our programs are supposed to be free but to be financially sustainable, we charge trainees at lower cost or free for those who cannot afford at all. This initiative is started by Oliver Mensah,  a software engineer with interests in tech education through setting up developer communities and programs. He has helped build the local developer ecosystem in Ghana through Facebook led initiative, Developer Circles.  

Since some of you have requested to support us financially, we decided to set up this donation page to help us accomplish our mission. I have decided to share the cost we have incurred so far in bringing this idea into fruition. So far we have rented and set up a venue that can host 8-10 per session with tables and chairs and about 20 people with just chairs. Also, we have purchased 4 laptops. Here is the link our expenditure breakdown: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_iHPGuhmRMmTwIGeaqdiUhh3P0RCKx6HWR1FHm-uDoE/edit#gid=0

Your support will be used to get a bigger space that can host about 50 people per session and buy additional 20-25 laptops for our training. Getting these will help us reach a lot of people and even bring together rural schools with no ICT facilities to host ICT sessions at our centre.  And that’s going to cost us about 5000-6000 dollars.